Better Learning Through Service

Active citizenship is woven into a Tufts University education, and Cummings School students can apply their growing expertise through learning-focused community service in places ranging from elementary schools to the Luke and Lily Lerner Spay/Neuter Clinic. Now, the school’s partnership with the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts is growing.

Erin King, VG17, has joined the Grafton campus as its first Cummings-Tisch civic life coordinator to help Cummings School administer and grow its service-learning opportunities. She will work with students on existing community outreach programs, as well as help them develop and find funding for their own initiatives “Service learning benefits all fields of medicine because graduates often end up dealing with disparities, both in care and research,” she said.

As one of the inaugural veterinary Tisch Fellows at the Smithsonian, Kristen Tobin, V19, helped develop a course for the University of Nairobi focused on camels, a common livestock animal in Kenya that can harbor diseases dangerous to humans and wildlife. In addition to gaining hands-on experience helping perform necropsies on rare exotic species (including a cheetah), Tobin wrote budgets, program descriptions, and grant applications—including one that will support educating veterinarians, camel farmers, and slaughterhouse workers in Kenya about the risk of disease transmission. “Hopefully, she said, “more awareness will drive local policy changes and improve overall camel, human, and environmental health.”

Over 40 years, Cummings School has become an international leader in veterinary medicine. And all it took was buying nearly 600 acres for a dollar, palpating police horses, and performing the occasional surgery by penlight.